By Hallie o'Donnell
Clair looked like a giant puffball, a big girl with a sea of brown spirals sitting atop a swollen face, and below that, a goiter. She had been engulfed by her ample adipose layers for her entire life, and stood in front of her deteriorating and almost blind miniature poodle, Jenny. Jenny was hauled around everywhere with Clair—even to the job at the therapy clinic where she worked as a therapist. From inside the black mesh windows in the dog carrier, Jenny could make out vague shapes in the form of humans as they waddled past them in the waiting room.
Clair now danced and swung her body around the room, eventually devolving into a Mama Cass double, replete with dated ‘60s dance moves, like The Frug and The Hatch:
“You must be my lucky star
‘cause you shine on me wherever you are…”
Madonna blared out of the music player, and Clair’s husband clanged some dishes as he looked for a casserole dish.
“Clair, you’re going to give Jenny a heart attack one of these days! Do you want chips crumbled on top of the tuna casserole?” queried Jon, a man of formidable size, similar to Clair.
“Yeah, crumbles sound good. Come on, Jenny! Remember how much life you used to have when you were a pup?” Clair landed on the couch with a big thud, and wiped her brow with the back of her arm.
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Four weeks earlier, in an undisclosed district of San Francisco, cars pulled up and people got out, making their way through thick fog and disappearing into the basement part of a building. Two large thug-like men waited at the door, checked the select arriving crowd, and let them come inside. The smell of a peculiar type of incense wafted outside through the cracks of the door.
Inside the dressing room, Clair put on her temple mistress robe, did some voice exercises, and turned around and whipped one of her male concubines:
“Pond scum, lick the corns off the bottom of my feet, and carry the burden of the beast! Enjoy every moment of being in the middle of my invective cross-hairs, and finally, carry all the burden of our Temple of Osiris fathers and forefathers!! May the spirit of Amen-Ra Hotep come to my aid, make me strong, and lead me back to the Land of Camels and Dates!!” The concubine shuddered a little, and attempted to pick a grape that he could feed to Clair, and Clair finding the whole gesture to be ingratiating and disgusting, knocked the grape out of his hand and sent it rolling. The concubine was then forced to eat the dirty grape and he did it with a sense of honor.
There were loudspeakers blaring out a kind of polyphonic array of droning horns, triangles and chimes, and chanting. Inside the temple, were the eager participants, all clad in dark robes and smacking their lips:
“Priestess Osiris, mama-mate, queen of our colony, shroud us in your benevolence and power, please give us some of your life force, and we will be forever indebted to you…”
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Priestess Osiris pushed Anton and Dmitri out of the way—they were trash, less than trash and yet they always found out where the new locations were and showed up anyway. They were hired Russian thugs, who were followers of a cult called “Brotherhood of New Age Rasputin.” They saw themselves as thieve-saints who roamed the streets looking to prey on the naïve and innocent, but who wanted to ascend toward Laskov, “bide land,” which was a place where you went to wait before meeting the “Holy One”—Rasputin.
Every Sunday, they spent hours trying to communicate with Rasputin’s spirit, and in order to do so, needed Napa Valley raised Longhorn Goats: they were satanic looking creatures that had angular, curved horns, icy green slits for eyes, and long wiry hair. Kathy Jones was owner of “Bahh&Co.,” a farm that bred and raised exotic sheep and goats, and for the right price would have supplied them to Satan himself if he had paid them enough. Her husband Stan was always deflated and the only solace he found was when he was watching Family Feud on television.
“Stan we gotta pack up the goats and take ‘em to the city!” cried out Kathy as she pulled the laundry out of the dryer. “I ain’t going to sit on my ass and fuck around all day, like you!” Stan stood up and took a sluggishly defiant stance that was furtive and threw the remote on the couch—he’d get his ass kicked if Kathy saw him doing it.
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Clair took the microphone and started talking fervently:
“Adherents of Osiris, we are here today to welcome a distinguished Bay Area resident, and talent… he wanted to be quiet, but he insisted that we introduce him by his real name: ‘Mork… ha ha, but you all know him as Misssttterr Robin Williams!!’ Williams ran up on stage in a hyped-up frenzy, and grabbed a microphone:
“Wowee zowee! Holy mother of god—Oh, sorry, ‘Mama-mate Osiris’—I mean, goddess!” Williams suddenly looked awkward and scrunched his mouth up while he made a sudden spastic movement, and then put his hand over his head, like a claw. “Where in the hell do all you people come from? I bet you guys aren’t GOP Good Old Boys then, either!”-- another spastic movement.
Suddenly there was what sounded like a big wagon being hauled through the building, and it was hauling an enormous gong. The mallet of the gong was an enormous 6 foot long phallus called “Horus.” At the sight of the gong mallet, Williams lurched forward, and quipped, “Holy Lama Dama Ding Dong! That’s one enormous dildo!!”
Eventually Clair’s mountainous presence occluded all those on stage, including the jangled comedian, who left asking where the nearest burrito joint was.
“All right people, let’s get it together then here. We’re dealing with hard economic times and forces that are leading us towards quiet and sometimes raging desperation. We are now going to pass around Amen-Ra Hotep’s corpse-arm, and as we pass it around, I will ask each of you to hold it, absorb its ancient energy, some of which has been known to have a curative quality, and let its energy enter into your own energy field.” The desiccated arm was passed around, and as it did, the eyes of the adherents lit up.
Hallie O'Donnell is a Bay Area writer. Her work is the sum of her life experiences, and living in the Bay Area can sometimes be a very strange trip, as it were. She has been inspired by the ghosts of Jack London, all the bizarre Bay Area flotsam and jetsam, and local myths, legends and kooks.
http://halliewrite.carbonmade.com/
